Combining 2 shapes in Photoshop CS6

Question

I have a shape, it has no fill, so it's just an outline, let's say it's an outline of a leg.
Now what I want to do is draw another outline inside that leg outline, but I don't want 2 end up with 2 separate shapes (2 layers), I want to draw the 2nd outline directly into the first one, so it's all one big vector shape.
For some reason this seems impossible to do in Photoshop CS6. If I select combine shapes, from the menu, free form pen tool and then draw the 2nd outline into the 1st outline, when I stop drawing I don't end up with one outline combined (on top of) the first, instead it just seems to do some weird clipping and I end up with the first outline shrinking, and the outline I just drew appearing not as an outline but as a path.
This is something that works perfectly in Flash pro, you draw a shape, you draw another one on top and you then have both perfectly combined, no fuss no bother. You can even vary the stroke strength at any point along the line in Flash, I'm not sure this is even possible in Photoshop.
Any ideas what's going wrong in photoshop or how to do that in photoshop?
Thanks for any advice.

Answer 1

GameViewPoint wrote:
......but can only get that if the 2nd outline is on a 2nd layer, i'e doesn't seem to be a way to combine that with the first outline.
You can almost get what you want by working slightly differently.
When you use the pen tool choose from the options bar the Path instead of the Shape option. Draw each of your paths as you normally do. When all the paths you want on a single layer are drawn click on the paths panel. Then choose the brush tool and select the color and width of the outline stroke. Then select one of the paths by clicking on it with the "black arrow" tool. At the bottom of the path's panel click on the icon for "stroke path with brush" . You can then repeat this process to stroke the other paths.  If all the paths on a layer will have the same stroke then select them all and one click on the stroke icon will stroke them all.
Note that for the kind of work you seem to be doing this approach has the benefit of using ANY brush (see bottom path in example), which can produce quite interesting effects.  The vector paths in the paths panel should be named if you want them saved in the document.  Also, if you want all the paths on a layer to be merged then alt click on the thumbnail of the relevant path and then from the Path Operations dropdown menu choose merge shape components.
Hope this helps.
Paulo